The Dangers of Discernment

Tim Challies has a great books on The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment. He has a whole chapter on "The Dangers of Discernment" which I found insightful. Here are a few of Tim's thoughts.

On a completely unrelated note, I thought this article by John MacArthur was thought-provoking. I'll bet we could get a good discussion going on this one!

1. Innocent as to What is Evil - 1 Corinthians 14:20 - "There is a danger inherent in the practice of discernment. Those who seek to draw clear distinctions between what is good and what is evil can spend undue time and attention on evil.

2. Guilt by Association - "Rather than understanding the beliefs of a particular individual and comparing those to the Word of God, they judge the person base on the beliefs of another person. The irrationally associate the guilt of one person's poor theology onto another.

3. Honor by Association

9. Withdrawal - "...discernment does not give us license to ignore Christian fellowship and to separate ourselves from other believers."

10. Truth without Love - "Perhaps the greatest danger in discernment is that it can be done from poor motives."

To Discern Truth ...

You all know how much I respect John MacArthur. In fact, my respect for him is just about as much as everyone else's in our small group.

Yet, this morning, in completing our study of Fool's Gold, I had the audacity to claim that there weren't 7, but 9, steps in a plan to achieve personal discernment. Well, you saw how mine were counted.

Now I'd like to add to that list of 7, not out of belligerence or one-upsmanship, but out of personal reflection. Some may be related; some not.

See if you discern to agree. Or, see if you want to add. Feel free to do so. That's what our blog is all about.

Ways to Build and Nurture Discernment

• You have to want it.
  
• You need to seek wisdom from God.
  
• You need to pray for wisdom because, as Proverbs 1:7 states, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction."
  
• You need to prepare and guard your heart; don't let it deceive you because "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick..." (Jer 17:9)
  
• It helps greatly to humble your Self. As Paul states in Timothy 2:15-17, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And their message will spread like cancer..." Doesn't that sound a little like the sacrifice called for im Romans 12:1? (But, boy! wouldn't it be great to sense approval and actually feel the confidence in being a co-worker?)
  
• Depend on the Holy Spirit. "Self" cannot do this alone; it, by itself, is powerless to do anything. Not so, with the Holy Spirt, who is so empowering.
  
• Study, learn and know Scripture.
  
• Love God's Word. Elevate it to the high place in your life as the source of all truth and wisdom.
  
• Obey God's Word.
  
• Love always. (This is easy to forget.)
  
• Sift and test.
  
• Nuture and correct. Put this discernment thing into action.
  
• Follow discerning leaders.
  
• Grow in this wisdom and discernment.

Well, that's 14. Not 9. Not 7. Any others???

BTW, the link to The Truth Project that I mentioned this a.m. is:

http://mytruthproject.org/login.aspx

If you have registered under the new site, just login and go to "Tours" for the new video excerpts.

If you haven't registered—ever, you might just be forced to sign up as a participant. That's easy. Just find my group and register. It won't hurt. I don't bite. Look for jfullen_at_tandemnet.com, or by zip of 80918.

IBG/JF

WORSHIP

Based on my comments this morning at the Men's Thursday Bible Study, hopefully I can accurately share some insights from the 9 am Tri-Lakes empty nesters Bible group with respect to how "people" worship.

Essentially, but not intended to be all inclusive, people tend to worship in two ways:
1. Response
2. Negotiate

An example how people would worship in "response" mode is when they give thanks to the Lord for their blessings, or in the context of establishing a personal relationship with our Lord or Savior.

On the other hand, another observed form of worship is a "negotiate" mode where we tend to offer to obey God's commands or do something with expectations of some positive respond from our Lord. This is sort of an imposed covenant from the bottom up, and the potential risk is what those imposed "expectations" may be beyond salvation. That said, the point was that for the obvious reasons or maybe not so obvious, this form of worship is shallow at best, or questionable. Just because I got up on Sunday to attend a worship service, it would be self centered of me to think that God owes me for attendance. I will confess I have been guilty in this type of worship in the past to some degree, and hopefully, am sufficiently enlighten now to avoid this type of worship. Of course, worship based an existing covenant offered from our Lord (i.e., Salvation through Christ) would not be subject to negotiation. Also, this observation was not intended to apply to our prayer life, where we can ask our Lord to help us.

Jim asked a couple of weeks ago what did it mean to each of us to worship. The points made above was not intended to define or dictate how we as believers should worship, but rather make us rethink why we worship.

It was a great Thursday study, and as ended, we prayed for our brothers in attendance and not in attendance that the Spirit would be there to help us all with our burdens of this day and during the pending week. May we live the WORD. God bless you all.